Tag: reflection (Page 7 of 7)

Photo by Jennifer Weigel

Broken Wing

5 April 2022 /

Nonfiction by Jennifer Weigel

I am still processing everything that has happened over the past year and then some, in part due to COVID and in part due to life. These haven’t been the most difficult times I have endured, nor have they been silver linings amidst challenges, but they kind of came at me out of left field and I stood there reeling for quite some time.

Early in 2019, I found myself without my voice: I had nothing to say, no art to share. When I first started making art again, I began by taking photographs of the empty sky. Not the nuance of color as you near the horizon, but as close up as I could zoom in on the most flat blue tone I could find, resulting in a pixelated wash of color with no real content.

This sense of drift eventually subsided and I was able to make art again. Flash forward to now, I have returned to photo documenting my surroundings and have even taken up horror writing. I am drawing and painting again. I am no longer at a loss for words. But I still feel incomplete and uncertain.

It’s funny the things you notice when you are in the midst of change. The butterfly is a symbol of metamorphosis and of becoming, but it is fragile and fleeting. Beauty and life are much the same. As I was walking down the sidewalk, I noticed this diminutive shard of a swallowtail wing and was struck by its delicate beauty. I have always noticed things that lie unobserved, some of which can be difficult to gaze upon because they bespeak past violence or hardship that cannot be undone. But at the time, it stood out as a symbol of the past year, the anguish and the hope.

I stood and stared at the wing for some time before a gentle wind caught it and it blew away like an unspent wish. This is my reflection upon the course of the past year and a half. I don’t entirely know where it has gone. I have experienced a lot of changes, some good, some bad. The wind has carried away the time and my thoughts with it and I still sometimes find myself reeling, gazing up at the sky awash in blue and contemplating the fragility of a found butterfly wing.

Jennifer Weigel is a multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist. Weigel utilizes a wide range of media: assemblage, drawing, fibers, installation, jewelry, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and writing. Much of her work touches on themes of beauty, identity (especially gender identity), memory & forgetting, and institutional critique. Weigel’s art has been exhibited nationally in all 50 states and won numerous awards.

Photo by Alex Perez on Unsplash

Catch and Release

26 March 2022 /

Nonfiction by James Callan

The tug of a taut, invisible thread. So thin. Unseen, it reflects on the gray water, so I suppose. At the far end a silver barb has found the silver mouth of a silver fish that has seen better moments, by far, again, so I suppose. Static water undergoes a savage transformation of violent thrashing, splashing. Like cheerleader pompoms in a gesture of exaltation for the winning touchdown, only inches below the surface of the lake. Liquid confetti tossed in celebration.

My arms hold on, barely, to the device that has snagged an agitated leviathan, or so it seems in my struggle. It’s probably a muskie. And when I finely pull the slick, scaled thing that weighs as much or more than a toddler into the canoe, onto the aluminum floor, I confirm, yes, a muskie.

I look into a mouth that looks like a perfect way to lose a finger, or a hand. This pink abyss, a downward spiral of open-heart surgery, scalpels and all. So many scalpels, needles waiting for their payback. I remove my wedding ring, just in case, and I go in reckless and brave, the last of which I like to think the more prominent. I had to be more than a little firm. I mean, fingers, hands, these are things I want to keep for myself. But in being firm, on the edge or perhaps over the edge of being rough, I remove the barb. I free the beast. And with one last wild gesture of courage, I shovel out what in that moment seemed to me to be the marriage between porpoise and a good way to get hurt.

The splash was surprisingly subtle. A non-splash, almost. Like a vacuum sucking in only the air around it, but quiet. The dark of the depth took the image of the muskie with it. Gone. Free. I caught a prize fish. And then I let it go.

James Callan grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lives on the Kapiti Coast, New Zealand on a small farm with his wife, Rachel, and his little boy, Finn. He likes toads and frogs and polliwogs, but he LOVES cats. He believes when he says that When Harry Met Sally is the best Rom-com of all time, he is not offering his opinion, but is merely stating a fact. He has been fully grown for a long while, but still has some growing up to do.

cloth with artistic design
Photo by Frank Cone on Pexels.com

This should’ve been an Urdu ghazal instead

19 March 2022 /

Poetry by Uday Khanna

While being buried I thought why spare me space for breathing,
I should’ve been wound in white and cremated instead.

Waking has taken up the place of life,
I should’ve been nostalgic for a time which passed me by instead.

Living has come disarmingly too fast lately,
I would like a stern word instead.

Someone asked me how I write so beautifully of terrible things,
I should’ve been a keeper of chopped meat instead.

I was named ignorant far too many times,
I should’ve been left blissfully unaware instead.

I keep meeting myself on different horizons for novelty,
The mystery of time is repetition instead.

This circle tells me I’m merely a handful of mistakes,
I should’ve been a fistful of wasted sperm instead.

Soon poetry will become unattainable,
I should’ve gone back to plucking flower buds instead.

O poet, you’ve spent all your life seeking to write about an ungrateful ant,
You should’ve stepped on it instead.

Uday Khanna is a research scholar currently pursuing his MPhil from the University of Delhi. His research interests lie in the fields of postmodernism, media theory, cyber-culture, and 20th century short-story genre.

snow covered village
Photo by Roland Juhász on Pexels.com

Primitive Prayer

13 March 2022 /

Poetry by Nancy Byrne Iannucci

I go outside at sundown,
pinning the stained-glass trail
to the Earth with ice cleats,

glorious snow under my feet.
The hawk screams above Creek Road.
Does anybody live in that blue house?

Hopper lonely, so Hopper lonely.
The snowbank at the side of the road
sits in the shape of a pew,

but I’d rather move with the mallards
slapping their wet feet, ready to fly.
I’m ready.

A songbird pounds
his pipe organ in the sky,
calling me up the hill.

I climb
breathing in the night air,
revived by this primitive prayer.

Nancy Byrne Iannucci is a widely published poet and the author of two chapbooks, Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review, 2018), and Goblin Fruit (Impspired, 2021); she is also a teacher, and woodland roamer. Nancy can be found at www.nancybyrneiannucci.com

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